For football's sake, let's hope Fergie is given the all-clear

SIR ALEX Ferguson's red and white army is marching to his defence, but support and sympathy will not be in such plentiful supply elsewhere.

The tyrant of Old Trafford has made too many enemies for that. Perhaps, in John Magnier and JP McManus, two too many.

The sound of Manchester United's manager protesting against the harassment of his soccer agent son will have raised wry smiles to the lips of those who have found themselves on the receiving end of Ferguson's tongue and temper.

If the Coolmore questionnaire does catch Sir Alex and young Jason with their hands in the till, many who reside elsewhere in the global village of football will relish the fall of the House of Ferguson.

More, however, would be dismayed. Not because they are fans of United or friends of Fergie, but because our entire national game would stand indicted by implication.

Put starkly, if English football's flagship club is a hotbed of corruption, then what about the rest?

Public confidence in the sport which is the population's greatest passion, challenged as it is already by the suspicion of widespread greed and impropriety, would be lost completely.

In that case there would be no heroes.

The reputation built by Ferguson through a momentous career would be ruined at its end. Yet, few would trust the motives of Magnier and McManus for destroying the most successful manager in English football history.

They deny they are pursuing a horseracing grudge over stud fees for Rock Of Gibraltar. Yet, it is the club in which they are the largest shareholders which stands to suffer most from their crusade against its revered knight.

For mega-rich Irishmen who have attended just one Premiership match between them, that is unlikely to be of much concern. They deal in high finance, not sporting romance.

For its subjection to such harsh taskmasters, football has only itself to blame. When the clubs became public companies they forfeited the protection of benign chairmen and left themselves at the mercy of profiteering businessmen.

The consequences include financial catastrophe at Leeds United - with the danger of more big clubs to follow - and now the scent of scandal at the richest club of all.

So much for the City slickers and how they were going to transform archaic, family-run clubs into proper businesses.

And even though the public impression is one of more crooks in the Square Mile than some prisons, football finds itself being called to account by corporate enforcers. Not only that but horseracing is murkier than football.

All a bit rich, then, United and their manager might think. But while the ironies abound they do not stop on one side of the fence.

Magnier and McManus are the inquisitors of Ferguson's own creation. It was through their mutual interest in racing that these Irish punters were encouraged by Sir Alex to build their stockholding in United.

Perhaps the most damning commentary on Ferguson is that he was so happy to horse trade with such ruthless people in the first place. A less impulsive football man might have sensed the potential for a damaging schism between powerful characters all accustomed to getting their own way.

United chairman Sir Roy Gardner and his directors are left seeking the answers about transfer dealings and grasping agents which can vindicate Ferguson as well as save themselves.

As they do so, transparency is being forced upon them. That is no bad thing.

Football has been allowed to conduct its affairs in secrecy for too long and if Ferguson is cleared, openly, then the game will breathe more easily.

If not, then the rooting out of the bung culture in football would be the only real good which could possibly come of this dirty war. At least every dodgy director, manager, player and agent would be on notice.

Even so, it would take some considerable time thereafter for football to recover from a nuclear fallout at Old Trafford.

When football became big business, this business turned nasty. The real victims are the fans who believe in the integrity of the game they love. They deserve better than a Theatre of Broken Dreams.

That is why they rallied so vociferously behind Sir Alex on Saturday. The Irish innuendos may be piling up against their hero, but what they do know for certain is that he has given immeasurably more to football than even the shadiest agent could take out of a thousand transfers.

j.powell@dailymail.co.uk

Those beefcakes on the gridiron pack more than the usual punch ONE of the most enduring cliches in British journalism is the phrase Ring Of Steel. It is used most regularly to describe the armed troops and riot police who encircle foreign football grounds when England's hooligans come calling.

Well, there was a ring of steel around the venue for American football's big game here last night. Houston's Reliant Stadium was protected by a solid metal fence through which only those with legitimate and peaceful reasons for attending Super Bowl XXXVIII could pass.

That barrier was just one of three checkpoints at which everyone from the wealthiest fan to the humblest lavatory cleaner was frisked.

There was also a ceiling of steel. The only aircraft allowed to penetrate a no-fly zone above the stadium were military planes.

Thousands of officers drawn from no fewer than 25 law enforcement agencies were on Orange Alert against any potential terrorist outrage.

Almost by way of an afterthought, the security chiefs were reminded to check out the players. That's right, those giants down there on the gridiron strutting their stuff in full view of the biggest television audience of the American sporting year.

According to the latest analysis of this trigger-happy nation, no single fraternity of people with the exception of the neighbourhood crime gangs carries more shooters than the 1,700-strong community of professional footballers.

Not only that, but they carry them through the stadium entrance to the locker-rooms.

The National Football League was the first U.S. sports body to introduce an antigun policy. However, a thorough investigation by the New York Times has revealed it to be common practice for team buses and players' cars to be waved into stadia without inspection.

Anecdotal evidence suggested it would be a wise precaution to subject last night's combatants - the New England Patriots and Carolina Panthers - to searches as rigorous as those which awaited Super Bowl ticket-holders.

Panthers wide receiver Muhsin Muhammad was apprehended recently with two concealed weapons in his car.

His late team-mate, running back Fred Lane, was arrested when police found a rifle in his boot. In a subsequent showdown with his wife, Lane was shot dead with his own 12-bore shotgun.

After a 19-year career as an offensive tackle, Lomas Brown retired last season.

'Guns are rampant and it's a disaster waiting to happen,' he says.

'Athletes become very emotional and sometimes those emotions get the best of us. Throw a gun into that mix and then maybe alcohol ... not good.' We might have discovered a whole new meaning to another well-worn phrase - the sudden death shootout.